AI for Support Portals

Al Hahn
Executive Director
The Association of Support Professionals

Support Portals are a necessity today. Users won’t call support unless they are very desperate and making them desperate is not the way to keep them happy. They prefer to self-serve, mostly using their phone. Companies that understand this are putting significant effort into building portals for self-service that are getting closer to effortless every day. Among the tools used for this, AI is the hottest trend in the marketplace right now. This year, several of our ASP Best Support Website award winners were noted for their AI uses. It can be challenging to pick out the right forms of AI for specific support functions. however.

Indeed, AI has been changing rapidly. ASP researched this over the past two years but before we could publish our research, things kept changing. Just a short time ago learning management was being used. At that time, it took many months to years to develop a support application that had high enough accuracy to be helpful. Then ChatGPT came out and things rapidly went crazy. Generational AI could develop a useful support application in just a few months. More recently, we are seeing the use of Agentic AI for self-service portals. So which AI tools are best for what functions?

On September 10th at 11:00AM Pacific time I will interview Vishal Sharma, Chief Technical Officer of SearchUnfity. We will be talking about the use of Agentic AI for Support Websites. Vishal is knowledgeable about all of the AI types being used for support. For ASP members and friends this webinar will help to clarify what can be a confusing area. Based on what I see the Best support sites doing today, you need to embrace AI and start using it for support immediately. Many companies are there already and you cannot afford to fall behind. The state-of-the art is moving at a historic rate for support.

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Changing Expectations of Support

People are far less willing to “go somewhere” on the web to get support. They expect it to be where they are. You might think it’s unfair, but if a user today is having a problem (especially in a mobile experience), they are very unlikely to go to your website, navigate to support, log in, and only then engage with you.